Saturday 13 August 2011

Writer in training

I've been told that writing is a discipline and that aspiring authors need to write something, however small and inconsequential it may be, every day.  So here I am, writing. My current dilemma is what to write.  I have a kaleidoscope of things I could talk about.  In fact one of the amazing (to me) things that has happened since I opened the blog is the sudden onslaught of ideas, phrases, paragraphs that have deluged my thoughts.  It's like a dam has burst somewhere.  I now carry a spiral bound bookie with me and it's got all kinds of notes in it, and there are scraps of paper with tidbits written on them piled haphazardly by my laptop.  I think it's time to get this writing business organized.

I've been reading "Writing to Change the World" by Mary Pipher (Riverhead Books, New York, 2006), and while I have no lofty expectations that anything I write will or even could change the world, I have found the book helpful.  The section on 'Organizing Paper' is catching my eye today.  "With writers, an idea misfiled is an idea lost." (p. 117)  Yup!  Add the inconsistencies of a vintage brain into the mix and many an idea gets lost in a sea of disconnected half sentences.  Lesson: when I have an idea, write it down, immediately; at the end of the day, file the notes.  I can do this!

Okay, I'm off to print file labels.
Cheers! 

2 comments:

  1. ok, so now i have just written down the name of the suggested book and author on my pad, beside my laptop..but! will the note get lost on all the other lil notes on the same page...i must say, i am soo anal at not wasting paper...that i make a note upside down at the bottom edge of the page, and then draw a line across...separating this note fr the next i write...scarey...
    ps. your writing is very easy to follow...you have a great flow to yer writing, which means that i would, indeed, spend the money on yer memoir...if you get soo inclined :)

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